People tracking by cooperative fusion of RADAR and camera sensors

Accurate 3D tracking of objects from monocular camera poses challenges due to the loss of depth during projection. Although ranging by RADAR has proven effective in highway environments, people tracking remains beyond the capability of single sensor systems. In this paper, we propose a cooperative RADAR-camera fusion method for people tracking on the ground plane. Using average person height, joint detection likelihood is calculated by back-projecting detections from the camera onto the RADAR Range-Azimuth data. Peaks in the joint likelihood, representing candidate targets, are fed into a Particle Filter tracker. Depending on the association outcome, particles are updated using the associated detections (Tracking by Detection), or by sampling the raw likelihood itself (Tracking Before Detection). Utilizing the raw likelihood data has the advantage that lost targets are continuously tracked even if the camera or RADAR signal is below the detection threshold. We show that in single target, uncluttered environments, the proposed method entirely outperforms camera-only tracking. Experiments in a real-world urban environment also confirm that the cooperative fusion tracker produces significantly better estimates, even in difficult and ambiguous situations

Radar and video as the perfect match : a cooperative method for sensor fusion

Accurate detection and tracking of road users is essential for driverless cars and many other smart mobility applications. As no single sensor can provide the required accuracy and robustness, the output from several sensors needs to be combined. Especially radar and video are a good match, because their weaknesses and strengths complement each other. Researchers from IPI – an imec research group at Ghent University – developed a new technique to optimize radar-video fusion by exchanging information at an earlier stage

The effect of simulated nitrogen deposition on growth and ecosystem functioning of managed P. patula plantation ecosystems in South Africa

Bibliography: leaves 183-203.The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of future NO₃ and NH₄ deposition on growth and nutrient cycling in P. patula plantations growing on shale-derived soil. This study consists of a field and pot-grown seedling experiments, the former commencing in November 1995 and the latter in August 1996

Fantasies of mother-child interaction in hay fever sufferers

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityThis study was designed to investigate whether individuals with perennial rhinitis, a disorder conceived of as psychosomatic, would evidence fantasies either of maternal domination or of maternal rejection. It was hypothesized that: (1) Cases of perennial rhinitis evidence more intense fantasies of maternal domination than do cases of seasonal rhinitis or do symptom-free individuals; and (2) Cases of perennial rhinitis evidence no more intense fantasies of maternal rejection than do cases of seasonal rhinitis or normals. [TRUNCATED

Losing Sight of the Trees for the Forest? Attention Allocation and Anomalies

This paper tests asset pricing implications of the investor attention shift hypothesis proposed in recent theoretical work. We create a novel proxy for the dynamics of inattention towards firm-specific information and explore its impact on prominent return anomalies. As hypothesized and with all else equal, the proxy positively predicts the post-earnings-announcement drift and negatively predicts the success of momentum strategies. Moreover, it has explanatory power for the profitability of pairs trading, a promising yet widely neglected setting concerned with the relative pricing efficiency of economically linked stocks. Taken together, our findings highlight the importance of time-varying investor attention allocation

Reviews

Computers and Typography edited by Rosemary Sassoon, Oxford, Intellect, 1993. ISBN: 1–871516–23–4

The trading volume impact of local bias : evidence from a natural experiment

Exploiting several regional holidays in Germany as a source of exogenous cross-sectional variation in investor attention, we provide evidence that the well-known local bias at the individual level materially affects stock turnover at the firm level. The German setting offers favorable characteristics for this natural experiment. Stocks of firms located in holiday regions are temporarily strikingly less traded, both in statistical and economic terms, than otherwise very similar stocks in non-holiday regions. This negative turnover shock is robust and survives various tests for cross-sectional differences in information release. It is particularly pronounced in stocks less visible to non-local investors, and for smaller stocks disproportionately driven by retail investors. Our findings contribute to research on local bias, determinants of trading activity and limited attention

The genetic architecture underlying the evolution of a rare piscivorous life history form in brown trout after secondary contact and strong introgression

Identifying the genetic basis underlying phenotypic divergence and reproductive isolation is a longstanding problem in evolutionary biology. Genetic signals of adaptation and reproductive isolation are often confounded by a wide range of factors, such as variation in demographic history or genomic features. Brown trout ( ) in the Loch Maree catchment, Scotland, exhibit reproductively isolated divergent life history morphs, including a rare piscivorous (ferox) life history form displaying larger body size, greater longevity and delayed maturation compared to sympatric benthivorous brown trout. Using a dataset of 16,066 SNPs, we analyzed the evolutionary history and genetic architecture underlying this divergence. We found that ferox trout and benthivorous brown trout most likely evolved after recent secondary contact of two distinct glacial lineages, and identified 33 genomic outlier windows across the genome, of which several have most likely formed through selection. We further identified twelve candidate genes and biological pathways related to growth, development and immune response potentially underpinning the observed phenotypic differences. The identification of clear genomic signals divergent between life history phenotypes and potentially linked to reproductive isolation, through size assortative mating, as well as the identification of the underlying demographic history, highlights the power of genomic studies of young species pairs for understanding the factors shaping genetic differentiation

The effects on waiting times of expanding provider choice:evidence from a policy experiment

Long waiting times for inpatient treatment in the UK National Health Service have long been a source of great popular and political concern, and therefore a target for policy initiatives. One such is the London Patient Choice Project, under which patients at risk of breaching inpatient waiting time targets were offered the choice of an alternative hospital with a guaranteed shorter wait. This paper uses a difference in difference econometric methodology to infer the impact of the choice project on ophthalmology waiting times. In line with our theoretical predictions, it finds that the project led to lower average waiting times in the London region and a convergence in waiting times amongst London hospitals.

Wie diversifiziere ich richtig? : Eine Diskussion alternativer Asset Allocation Ansätze zur Konstruktion eines "Weltportfolios"

Die vorliegende Studie evaluiert die Effizienz verschiedener Ansätze zur Vermögensallokation aus Sicht eines deutschen Privatanlegers. Neben einem erweiterten Zeitraum von 1973 bis 2007 tragen wir dabei in zweifacher Hinsicht zur Literatur bei. Erstens vergleichen wir heuristische Strategien mit wissenschaftlichen Optimierungsmodellen im Sinne von Markowitz (1952). Zweitens unterscheiden wir in der Untersuchung zwischen zwei prominenten, aber häufig getrennt voneinander analysierten Diversifikationsformen: einer geographischen Streuung des Anlagevermögens im Aktienbereich und einer Verteilung des Anlagevermögens auf verschiedene Anlageklassen. Hierzu berücksichtigen wir neben Aktien zusätzlich Renten und Rohstoffe. Die Zusammenführung dieser beiden Aspekte resultiert in der Diskussion denkbarer Aufteilungsmechanismen zur Konstruktion eines möglichst effizienten "Weltportfolios". In der empirischen Analyse erweist sich im Fall einer Diversfikation im Aktienbereich kein theoretisch fundiertes Optimierungsmodell gegenüber heuristischen Ansätzen als überlegen. In dieser Kategorie weist eine fundamentale, BIP-basierte Gewichtung signifikant bessere Ergebnisse als eine Marktkapitalisierungsgewichtung auf. Eine simple Gleichgewichtung erzielt zudem, in Übereinstimmung mit DeMiguel et al. (2008), mit Optimierungsverfahren vergleichbare Resultate. Auch unter Einbeziehung von Renten und Rohstoffen bieten Markowitz-Modelle out-of-sample keine besseren Ergebnisse als heuristische, auf zeitstabilen Gewichten beruhende Ansätze, die wir aus bestehenden Empfehlungen in der Literatur ableiten und auf ihre Robustheit hin Überprüfen. Auf Grundlage unserer Resultate schlagen wir daher einen einfach und kostengünstig zu implementierenden Ansatz zur Vermögensallokation für Privatanleger vor